


Requiem

by linosity



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Hanamaki's pov, M/M, mattsun likes flowers, ohohohoo vd fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 04:20:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13674150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linosity/pseuds/linosity
Summary: It's been a year, and Hanamaki visits Matsukawa again.





	Requiem

_Makki._

Hanamaki’s eyes split open.

It’s that dream: a hand reaching out towards him, fingers tracing down his jaw, and his name barely whispered in the darkness as hot breaths trickled down the length of his earlobe. Then he’ll wake up drenched in sweat.

He slaps his hand over his eyes and groans. Mornings after waking up from this dream are the worst: he’ll have to take a shower to get rid of all the disgusting perspiration when he doesn’t even have enough stamina to leave the bed. Groaning once more in his masochistic sufferance, Hanamaki pushes himself off the bed and shuffles towards the bathroom.

Ten minutes is all it takes for the pink-haired boy to leave the bathroom, with the droplets in his wet hair sparkling under the morning sun and the bacteria in his teeth cleaned away by 99.9%. Then another five minutes throwing on a white button-down and a pair of versatile jeans and he’s good to go. With that, he steps out of his bedroom.

The apartment seems a bit too large this morning, or maybe it’s just Hanamaki’s skewed vision as he rubs his eyes. It’s complete with two bedrooms, a living room and a surprisingly well-fitted kitchen, which is really more than enough to make a simple breakfast. Add the butter. Turn the fire on. Add the bread. He came to grow sick of eating the same takeaways every morning, and by the second year of college he had successfully learnt the art of cooking just so he wouldn’t need to touch those stir-fried noodles ever again.

Another ten minutes and he finished frying the egg as well, completing the averagely appetizing egg sandwich. Hanamaki takes a bite and chews softly. “Not bad,” he mutters, eyebrows raised in faint recognition. It’s what he mutters every morning when he gets up and makes something for breakfast, and it became a habit that Hanamaki doesn’t bother to quit.

In the following minutes of sandwich savouring, Hanamaki can’t help but notice the buzz of the highways outside. Peak hours should have already been over, yet the occasional honks of cars continue to harass his ears. They never really got used to it ever since stepping onto the floors of Tokyo for the first time: the city was just too different.

It’s been five minutes and the sandwich is no more. Hanamaki lifts the pan into the sink and turns the tap on, watching the water splash against the oil smeared across the surface of the pan and beat to a rest, swirling into a puddle at the curves of the pan. The soap is added, the pan is scrubbed, and the pink-haired boy lifts the pan back onto the stove.

He looks up for the first time, his eyes skimming through the kitchen shelves before grabbing a spray bottle, half-filled with water. Hanamaki then walks to the room at the end of the short corridor, Mattsun’s bedroom, and gently pushes the door open.

The first thing that greets him is the blinding sun that flashes upon his face; it is only by covering his eyes and squinting as hard as possible that he’s able to make out the faint shape of the bedroom. It’s unexpectedly dark: the metal bedframe Mattsun picked during their trip to IKEA is painted matte black, and the bedsheets are a shade of grey lighter by a margin. Mattsun really liked grey: the blanket is grey, the pillow is grey, the shelves are black—or just a really dark shade of grey? Hanamaki doesn’t really know, he never asked Mattsun before.

He takes a few steps forward, patting the dust away from the bedsheets. The bed is already made like always, because he made it last week. Hanamaki then turns to the bookshelf. The cubicles are stuffed with all sorts of books: textbooks from Mattsun’s old courses, research papers that he either had to read or just read for the fun of it, and fiction. Mattsun loved thrillers among all things; he read them to break free from sterilized laboratories and screechy blackboards. At this, Hanamaki smiles a little: he remembers watching Mattsun burrowed under that grey blanket, a finger hanging from his lower lip as his other hand flips a page.

Stacked together before the books are a line of potted plants and test tube terrariums that Mattsun couldn’t stop buying and making for some reason. The lichen in the test tubes have turned slightly yellow, and Hanamaki gives the test tubes a spritz of the spray bottle, watching the water molecules dance under the sunlight. He then carries on to water the potted aloe veras that have been growing rather well under his care. Mattsun plucked some leaves from those aloe veras once, when Hanamaki scratched himself against the stairs. He wanted to do it himself, but Mattsun wouldn’t let him, muttering something about taking responsibility for his plants or something along the lines of that.

Walking towards Mattsun’s black study table, Hanamaki peers at the calendar sitting at its corner and crosses yesterday’s date with a pen in the top drawer. His gaze then shifts to the current date: 14 February.

The fact that it’s Valentine’s Day takes a few seconds to settle in.

Hanamaki throws the door wide open, dashing out of Mattsun’s bedroom and into his own. He seizes his wallet on the table and almost trips on his way out the door. Thrusting his feet into his everyday shoes, the boy’s mind is blank, the only thought being how he’s supposed to meet Mattsun and bring a bouquet of flowers.

***

The flower shop is two streets away, right next door to the café Hanamaki and Mattsun used to frequent while walking back from college. Hanamaki bursts into the store to a startled florist, panting heavily and on the verge of collapsing to the floor.

There are only two small lights hanging overhead; most of the light shines through the glass panels that literally make up the wall of the entrance. Plants are everywhere, and Hanamaki realizes why Mattsun likes them so much: they are mesmerizing to watch, especially the vines and potted plants that hang above his head, some with leaves that dangle by his cheeks. The flowering plants are stacked on racks against the walls, or kept as bouquets in the refrigerator by the counter. Hanamaki looks down to see the succulents that Mattsun tended to buy, arranged in rows and columns at the bottom racks.

It doesn’t take long for him to spot the flowers of his choice; he doesn’t think twice before placing some white roses on the counter.

“You sure you don’t want the red ones?” The florist asks, taking out a roll of ribbon. Hanamaki blinks with a snip of her scissors. “I mean, since it’s that time of the year.”

“It’s fine, he likes them white anyway.” Hanamaki replies, still panting slightly.

The florist looks up, eyebrows raised and smiling. “He.”

The walls seem to close in on him and he succumbs to the touch of the flower buds that drape from the ceiling, their bittersweet taste grazing across his lips—and then there’s Mattsun, standing right before him. His eyes are half-lidded as he steps closer until their noses touch and their breaths melt into the air. He is everywhere, from the fingers wrapping around Hanamaki’s trembling hand to the whispers that quietly conquer his mind.

They went to a college party that night, back when they were just friends. Mattsun cornered Hanamaki outside the toilet when the pink-haired boy thought his friend had enough beer for the night. His breaths were dripping with alcohol, and soon enough Hanamaki tasted its bittersweet sensation as Mattsun closed in, their lips barely touching before Hanamaki pushed him away, glowering. _You’re drunk_ , Hanamaki said, and Mattsun shook his head.

Hanamaki blinks and Mattsun is gone. “… Yeah.”

The florist nods and ties the ribbon around the bouquet—it was complete. The pink-haired boy throws the extra change onto the counter and dashes out of the shop, his cheeks burning for no good reason. The bouquet looks decent, but in all honesty he really doesn’t know. Mattsun knew things like this better than he does.

Mattsun never brought flowers home. Sometimes he would buy tiny pots of aloe vera arrange them in a line on the bookshelf, sometimes he made miniature terrariums from test tubes he once kept in the college laboratories. But he never brought flowers home; they were, to him at least, reserved for truly special days.

 _Days like this_ , Hanamaki remembers Mattsun whispering as his thumb gently rubbed the skin of Hanamaki’s palm, a bouquet of white roses lying in the backseat. _The red ones are too cliché._

The pink-haired boy jolts at the wrinkles of his hand, raised to his chest.

***

The cool air grazed his cheeks as he stepped into the columbarium. Mattsun’s family had him cremated, burnt into ashes. Hanamaki was at his cremation ceremony, as a friend and nothing more; and as a friend he had no reason not to be there. After all, it was understandable for a loved one to grieve in private, yet it was almost required for a platonic friend, acquaintance, to lay down a flower and solemnly pay their respects to the man they knew and barely admired.

What Hanamaki felt towards Mattsun was more than what simple admiration could be.

He remembers the flames that wrapped themselves around the length of his boyfriend’s legs, his waist, his arms, his neck. As the pink-haired boy caught a glimpse of Mattsun’s face, he was once again reminded of Mattsun’s sharp features that he never really noticed while being whisked away by the tides of the night. His eyelashes fluttered in the fire, and Hanamaki imagined those eyes open, twinkling under the neon lights they had stumbled upon downtown. The flickering light poured into the raven-haired boy’s hollow cheeks, the same cheeks Hanamaki would suddenly kiss in the middle of a sitcom, and he would feel Mattsun’s lips twitching upwards; those lips that lay frozen then as he lay on the deathbed, his body melting into mere ash. The cuts and bruises on his body were covered spotlessly, and he seemed so perfect.

He seemed at peace, like death was so easy.

Back then, Hanamaki was there was a friend and nothing more, watching the fragments of their relationship crumble into chemical compounds that he couldn’t think to name.

Maybe he shouldn’t have suggested going out for dinner, maybe they shouldn’t have made out. Then they would have avoided it all: the car speeding the wrong way, the screeching that deafened his ears, Matsukawa.

Hanamaki remembers a fading vision of the open road, then jolting awake with blood splattered on his hands and trickling down his cheeks. He tilted his head towards the side and it was the last thing he wanted to see: glass shards piercing through Mattsun’s neck and gathering in the creases of his jacket. Blood seeped into the leather seats and he felt his eyes burn; he was slapping his cheeks, shaking his shoulders, screaming and crying into his ear.

Mattsun didn’t wake up.

Hanamaki blinks a lone tear away from the corner of his eye and looks up to a photo of his boyfriend, smiling his crooked smile and reassuring gaze. It was his passport photo, Hanamaki realizes as he recalls Mattsun flashing him that same photo in his bedroom, and laughing about it because his eyes looked like slits.

Hanamaki pulls a half-hearted smile as he steps forward with his bouquet. “Hey,” he mumbles. “It’s me.”

The photo smiles back at him like always.

“So, um…” He could feat his feet shuffling against the concrete path, laced with clovers and whatnot. “Happy Valentine’s Day, even though that’s probably not a day you’d want to remember. Ha ha. Ha.” His dry laughter dissipates and he pinches the bridge of his nose, hard. God, he really isn’t good at talking. “Hope you’re doing well. Good. Fine. Whatever you’re feeling up there I guess.

“So it’s been a year? Since, well, that happened. Life’s the same, nothing really changed. The café got renovated though, it has hanging lights and nicer tables, and the whole place looks a lot better. You would have loved it.” Hanamaki squats by the shelves of potted ashes, his bouquet of white roses barely touching the ground. “I’m serious, they grow plants now, and they’re basically everywhere. Probably bought them from the florist next door. I got these from the florist, by the way. Pretty cool.” He said, lifting the bouquet and shaking it a little; the bouquet basks under the partial sun.

He hangs his head for a while before pushing himself back up, gently laying the bouquet before Mattsun’s cubicle, by the nameplate that reads ‘Matsukawa Issei, the star that never fades’ with a couple laser-etched stars scattered across the metal.

The pink-haired boy traces his fingers along the edges of the cubicle, feeling the dust dancing across his touch. Everything is just too reminiscent. “I miss you,” he whispers, and he feels his eyes burn again. And it is at times like this, when he stands and lets his tears fall, that he vaguely hears a deep, quiet voice among the rustling of the trees.

_I miss you too._

**Author's Note:**

> i couldn't think of a better title than 'Requiem' so forgive me for not being able to think
> 
> this was really rushed tbh because i really wanted to write this by vd and yet i only had two weeks before vd arrives hAhahahAHA god bless @wayytoodeepin for beta-ing (beta-ing????) my terrible draft and making it actually decent
> 
> pls comment so i know where i'm going thankyou
> 
> tumblr: paraboline.tumblr.com


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